Sunday, December 23, 2012

What just happened?

I guess my brain has married two distinct mental states for how I drink certain liquids..........hehehehehe.....I am already retrospectively laughing at this last sentence as if I wrote it 2 years ago when I was young, dumb, and full of come.

I drank a cup of coffee at my favorite local in a town called Hongdae where there are plenty of people who are in fact young, dumb, and MADE of come. The reason this coffee house is located in Hongdae has always eluded me. I have put much thought into the possiblilities. It is one of only two coffee houses of it's kind in all of Korea. This is because it is unique; so unique that people from all over Korea come to it. The owner of it actually has a passion for coffee. I know this because he told me. He personally goes to the countries from which he imports his coffee and communicates with the people there. He spends his whole life swimming in coffee, not money. So of course you can taste his sweat in the coffee they serve you and it makes a huge difference from the cup of Jo you would get from the corner cookie cut shop. Yet he chooses to have his shop in Hongdae - A place inhabited by palates who couldn't differentiate a cup of quality coffee from quality dirt. I could open up a shop that advertised home grown, down to earth coffee and serve my customers actual earth - and I'd still have success. If there were a town where you wanted to face smash every persons cup of coffee in the name of Louis C.K. - Hongdae is that place.

So I drank a cup of yummy coffee at this beautiful establishment. It was in the utmost pretty of china sets - blue circles laced with curvy purple lines cradled by a golden ear. My goodness I love that place. Such attention to detail!!!! A cup of coffee in a teacup that makes Queen Eliz look like a two-dollar whore tastes much better than the same coffee in some paper putter piece of poop and I hope your taste buds start a mutiny if you think otherwise. They deserve better.

So I drank this cup of coffee at this establishment that I love. It was siphon served. Yea. I bet you have no idea what I'm talking about. That is exactly my point. Siphon is one of the many alternative ways to prepare coffee you might discover if you actually enjoyed coffee for it's robust flavor and complex texture; not just for it's chemical affect on your mind and the social culture that has sprouted around it. See, the flavor of coffee is so complex with so many factors that go into it even before it has been brewed. From the intimate relationship it has with it's geographic location to it's method of roasting. It all affects how the flavor matures. And even then once you have the beans ready to be ground, and drank, you still have options of preparing the grounds that can enhance certain parts of the flavors already instilled into it from nature.

So I was drinking this cup of siphoned coffee in this adorably royal china set from some country (I don't know where. I actually don't care. I only drink coffee because it makes me look sophisticated) and I had the weirdest of experiences. I like me coffee bitter and black like a dead man in the 1920's and so when I get down to the last couple swigs; when I get dirty with the dregs it usually packs an extra bitter punch. I like it that way with my coffee, women etc. This time as I took my last punch I was hit with something new but old; something that caught me completely off guard. My face reacted with a cringe typical to when I down a shot of...........tequila. In fact in that instant, my brain was telling me exactly that. I was drinking tequila. Ignoring all the chemical and organic proof that I was actually drinking coffee, I was so mentally convinced that what I just drank was tequila that I almost jumped up out of my seat and screamed "LET"S PARTY!!!!!!!!"

Now the only explanation for this that I can think of is that somehow in that moment my brain got confused. There are very few drinks that trigger similar reactions in my brain and I guess hard liqueurs and strong bitter drinks seem to share the same hot spots in my brain.

My brain belied it's primitive origin for what was just a millisecond but just long enough for my other brain to catch the slip.